In August 2025, 25 international experts convened at Syracuse University for an unconventional exercise: planning China’s invasion of Taiwan. Over two days, academics, policy analysts, and current and former U.S. officials set aside their usual defensive perspectives to adopt Beijing’s offensive strategic mindset in a wargame.

Their focus wasn’t on how the United States might counter Chinese aggression, but on how China could attempt to overcome the challenges that have so far deterred it from attacking the island.

Michael Williams, associate professor of public administration and international affairs, along with Jeffrey Michaels of RAND Europe discuss the exercise in their article, “Wargame to Take Taiwan, from China’s Perspective,” published by War on the Rocks.

“This role reversal yielded an uncomfortable insight,” they write. “The invasion scenarios that dominate U.S. military planning—involving massive amphibious assaults on Taiwan and preemptive strikes on American bases—may fundamentally misread Beijing’s calculus. As the wargame revealed, analysts seeking to understand China’s intentions should pay greater attention to plausible alternative military pathways to reunification that involve far less force and far more political calculation.”